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Ch150 - Anonymity (iv)
As facts proved, they were absolutely right in their decision to enter the treatment centre for a look.
This treatment centre in Wine City was largely the same as other treatment centres that had sprung up overnight across the alliance.
They were uniformly fortress-like buildings in the shape of a dome with pillars spaced out beneath a glass roof.
The outpatient wing, emergency department, and pharmacy were grouped together, whereas the general inpatient wing was connected to them by a long corridor.
But there were two areas apart from these.
One was a quarantine station, whereas the other was a drug research institute.
The door to the quarantine station was tightly guarded. Further, it wasn’t accessible by simply going up a couple of steps or crossing a long corridor.
However, the drug research institute was located behind the quarantine station. If they wanted to get to the research institute, they had to pass through the quarantine station first.
And so they were barricaded from entry.
“Do you have wristbands?” A staff in a white coat stationed at the door to the quarantine station reminded them. “This is the quarantine station. You can’t enter it without a reason.”
It was the first day that the treatment centre was officially open. The centre was chaotic inside, full of people who couldn’t find their way.
The navigation bots were so overwhelmed that a good few of them had their circuits fried. Staff had to be stationed at various points to provide support.
The same disorder, if set in De Carma or Redstone, could be easily resolved. But Wine City lagged too far behind—and it was also this which Yan Suizhi’s group wanted to take advantage of.
But little did they expect that, in spite of the poor management, its quarantine station staff were conversely very vigilant.
Laur instinctively fished for an excuse to be here. “Oh, we don’t. I’m only here to throw a heel.”
With that, she turned towards the trash disposal bin next to the door.
The staff in a white coat blanked. “Throw what?”
Fearlessly, Laura waved the objects in her hand, which, of all things, were the long and slender heels from a pair of stilettos.
Mr ‘White Coat’, “????”
“The steps at the entrance were too slippery; I almost fell on my mouth. One side of my heels broke, so I just broke the other side off as well,” Ms Laura explained.
“…” Awed, White Coat gave Laura a once-over. “I’m sorry. The snow’s too heavy. I’ll inform them to clear the snow at the entrance.”
When Laura went to toss the heels, Yan Suizhi walked up to White Coat and made small talk with him. “We need wristbands to enter the quarantine station? What are they?”
White Coat pointed at the sign above his head. God knows how many times he had made this reminder, and his tone was dripping exasperation. “The patients staying in here are extremely infectious and unable to be treated for now. We can’t let it be freely open to the public. If your loved one is inside, you need to have your identity verified at the front, and if your records check out, you can get a wristband, which has to be used within the day.”
Yan Suizhi glanced at the registration counter a distance off. “And what if we’re not related to them but are colleagues and friends?”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
This wasn’t something that could be checked through the records.
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Liu, “Sure, will do. This way!”
“…”
The two staff enthusiastically took it upon themselves to hoist the ‘visitors’ onto the tiger’s back. Splendid, they couldn’t not register anymore; it would look even weirder if they were to turn heel and leave now.
Yan Suizhi smiled at White Coat, and the three of them turned towards the registration counter.
Laura dampened her voice. “Ah… I seriously have to hand it to him. How the hell are we going to invent a consultation ID for him?”
Gu Yan calmly opened his mouth. “ms56224807.”
Laura, “????”
“There was a gentleman being coaxed to enter the quarantine station when we passed by the sign-up machine just now. I glanced at it in passing,” Gu Yan said.
Yan Suizhi was walking at the head, so it wasn’t convenient for him to look back. He casually flashed a thumbs up at him behind his back in encouragement.
Laura, “…”
This lady acutely felt like she had returned to her days in Maze University, when all students would parade around in front of the professor, vying for praise. Only Gu Yan was special—
It was impressively easy for him to piss the professor off, and just as easy for the professor to piss him off.
They often joked that the sole reason Student Gu wasn’t expelled was due to his excellent intrinsic qualities.
From the looks of it now…
Whether pissed off or not, Laura silently critiqued, such things were all bogus. As long as one could pull through in a clutch, even the frostiest of people could receive the professor’s favour.
See, everyone had seen the patient be coaxed into the quarantine station just now. But most people’s attention would gravitate towards the argument between the patient and his family, which would fill their minds with hogwash of ‘hand me back my car’, ‘don’t keep me from earning money’, ‘I’d rather die than enter the quarantine station’, etc—who would think of memorising the consultation ID as a precaution?
In the blink of an eye, they were standing before the registration counter.
Liu, who the White Coat called out to, was wearing gloves and blocked them from operating the machine themselves. After making a few clicks on the screen, he said, “What’s the consultation ID?”
The distinguished Lawyer Gu repeated it without an ounce of pressure.
The screen flashed, and the corresponding consultation information leapt out. It was indeed the same person. The photo was of the man they saw just now, who worked as a taxi driver. He was severely infected; the diagnosis even noted that he showed symptoms of drug dependency.
Seeing that Liu had taken out three visiting wristbands, Yan Suizhi extended his hand.
But Liu didn’t immediately hand it over. Instead, he directly tapped on ‘contact patient’ on the screen.
Liu explained, “Sorry, it’s a bit chaotic as today is the first day, so the procedures are more complicated. We’ll need the patient in question to verify it.”
Laura, “…”
Verify, my ass. Their cover would be blown the moment they tried. Thanks but no thanks.
Laura, a self-professed gutsy woman, could unblinkingly sneak into a private space shuttle—but even so, she was dutifully sequestered in a corner, not interacting with anyone. How was it comparable to this, where they were being watched at every turn?!
And yet there they were, scorning her for her lack of fear of death last night. Pur-lease. Laura was unreconciled.
Just as she was about to find an excuse to leave, the comms connected. Taking the mini microphone connected to the machine, Liu said, “Good morning. You have visitors. I’ll need you to confirm that you’d like to meet with them.”
“Visitors?” The patient’s hoarse voice carried over. “Who?”
Then, Laura goggled as her revered, beloved, and ever-collected professor took the microphone with aplomb. “It’s me.”
Laura, “…”
With both hands stuck into his pockets, the distinguished Lawyer Gu gazed at the back of Yan Suizhi’s head, admiring a certain someone’s ability to improvise utter nonsense with alacrity.
The patient was probably completely thrown for a loop as well, unable to wrap his head around it even after blanking for two seconds.
Yan Suizhi didn’t give him the chance to process it either. Resting his hand against the counter whilst the other hand held the microphone, he went on in an incomparably natural and incomparably friendly voice to say, “I haven’t seen you since our last drinking session and was so surprised to learn that you ended up catching this disease. What are you going to do with that car now that you’ve entered the quarantine station? Are you not able to drive it for now?”
It was obvious that this question hit the bull’s eye of all of the other’s worries. The patient heaved a sigh and cursed under his breath. “Fuck! Don’t remind me, this thing is killing me! Forget it. Come up and I’ll tell you about it.”
Their conversation was too natural, with nary a single stammer once during which, such that even Liu, who was listening on the byline, didn’t perceive any problems.
“Then I’ll be giving your friends wristbands,” Liu said.
“Yeah, go ahead. Keeping it all bottled up is driving me crazy!” With that, the patient cut the line.
Five minutes later, the trio donned their isolation suits and put on gloves, confidently walking into the quarantine station. But Laura still couldn’t resist saying in the end, “Professor, next time, if you had a plan, can’t you give us advance notice?”
Yan Suizhi tightened his gloves. Hearing this, he said with a smile, “There was no plan. Did you plan ahead before boarding the space shuttle yesterday?”
“No.”
“There you have it.”
“Ohhh I see now, I must have learnt my guts from you, professor.”
“…”
Lawyer Gu watched this from the byline, thinking—what did ‘bad company corrupts good morals’ mean? This, exactly.
Yan Suizhi kept his gloves, shooting him a sidelong look. “What slander are you secretly making up this time?”
Gu Yan, “…Teacher Yan, did I open my mouth?”
“Will not opening your mouth keep me from knowing?” Yan Suizhi arched his brows and said.
Gu Yan, “…”
The stubbornness of his sophistry was infuriating.
Thanks to that patient, they were finally able to access the ground floor of the drug research institute.
However, the Mansons weren’t fools. There were iris recognition scanners installed at the elevator doors of the research institute, which wasn’t something they could just dupe and get past.
They’d be in big trouble should they trigger the alarm.
Right as Yan Suizhi was calculating the difficulty of getting hold of a verifiable iris, a group of people similarly dressed to them entered the lobby.
After entering, some of them removed their masks for better ventilation.
They took Yan Suizhi’s group as colleagues who had just come down from upstairs, about to enter the quarantine station, and nodded at them in greeting, then brushed past them, stepping one by one into the elevator.
The iris scanner beeped rhythmically, the indicator light above flashing green.
“The woman in the lead…” Laura spoke at a volume that only they could hear. “Do you see her? The one with a ponytail.”
Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan, taking advantage of the cover provided by their masks, glanced over there, accurately pinpointing the woman who had just stepped into the elevator.
She was likely very young, but the make-up enhanced her presence, making her appear much more mature.
Laura continued, “I saw her on the space shuttle last night. There were people constantly on the comms with her. In my opinion, she’s likely the person in charge on that shuttle, at the very least. So our guess wasn’t off the mark. Those smuggled drugs did end up here, except… what are they being used for?”
After going on for a while, she then noticed that neither of them was responding to her, and she inadvertently asked, “Professor? Gu? Did you guys hear what I said?”
“We did.”
When the elevator doors closed, Yan Suizhi and Gu Yan turned their heads over.
“Then why didn’t you answer?” Laura was puzzled.
“No, it’s just that the lady just now… looks a bit familiar to me,” Yan Suizhi said. “Of course, it’s also possible that I’m imagining it.”
Little did he expect, right after saying so, Gu Yan spoke as well. “You’re not. She looks familiar to me, too.”
Only, where had they seen her before…